Jake Ellison

Online Managing Editor

Jake Ellison is central to providing overall accuracy, timeliness and creativity to KPLU's online product. He has spent over 17 years in the news business, 10 of which were as a reporter, editor and online producer at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He spent the last third of those years working solely in the online environment as a writer, curator and editor and has the distinction of being among Seattle's pioneering web-first reporters.

Jake has won a number of journalism awards and honors, been a panelist and speaker on journalism and leadership, and has a Masters Degree in creative writing.

Fri September 14, 2012

Are abandoned, dilapidated houses a problem in your neighborhood? They are in Auburn, and that city’s mayor isn’t putting up with it.

Mayor Pete Lewis has been taking photos of abandoned houses owned by far-flung banks and publishing them with the bank’s information on a “Wall of Shame” website. And that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the city's efforts.

Support for legal marijuana in Washington appears to be strong among adults, but what will it mean for kids?

This week saw surprising support for the state initiative legalizing marijuana from the Children’s Alliance. The Seattle-based advocacy group, which has dozens of social-service agencies as members, says legal pot would be good for kids.

Seattle has a new deal for a sports arena to house NBA and NHL teams. If the full council approves the agreement later this month, lead private investor Chris Hansen will then face the possibly tougher job of getting a deal for the teams.

The revised deal has been officially announced by members of the Seattle City Council and addresses concerns by the Port of Seattle and others that traffic generated by events there would clog up the SoDo area.

Sure there was “ooh” and “aah” and “wow” from the top of the Space Needle on a sunny afternoon overlooking Seattle earlier this week, but then came “Oh my god!” and “What is that?” and “That’s amazing.”

The culprit?

Two 60-plus-foot “daddy longlegs” standing atop the roof of the Armory at the Seattle Center, casting long shadows and looking all the world like they could be real (if our universe allowed such things).

“Washington and Oregon are on track to burn less gasoline in their cars and trucks this year than at any time since 1996 – less even than in 2008, when gas prices spiked and the economy cratered. … At least for the moment, the plateau in gas consumption that began in the late 1990s has turned into a gentle downward slide.”

Diversions

2:32 pm

Thu August 23, 2012

It’s 1970 and the one thing really bugging one Seattleite – enough to make him/her write a letter and, apparently, leave the city – was hippies.

“Seattle got so bad with hippies, I just had to get out of that city,” the anonymous writer told Mayor Wes Uhlman.

In addition to hippies, we found four other things really bugging people in the early 1970s on the Flickr stream of the Seattle Municipal Archives – communists, smelly busses, the United Nations and protesters.